Obviously Wilcox had a tough task in front of him: Just a few weeks to prevent mass exodus of the signing class Dykes was putting together AND to get some additional recruits to bolster the class. But even if that task was exceedingly hard, it’s difficult to look at the end result with anything but consternation:

14 total recruits (not the 20+ Cal needed)

Only 2 4-star players

Only 4 dedicated defensive players (we’ll see how much luck he has in getting the 3 “athletes” (which means they play multiple positions, often on both sides of the ball) to play defense.)

Only 1 DB

Rivals ranks it as the 78th best class in the country and worst in the conference. There’s just no other way to say it than it is a bad class. Now, good coaches find ways to overcome a weak class. They have lots of knobs to work with to get around one bad class (mid-year recruits, JC transfers, work extra hard on next year’s, etc.). But there’s no doubt that Wilcox’s job, which was already hard, just got a little bit harder.

Katster, I was using Rivals for my star and position info. Looks like they’re expecting two of those “athletes” (in quotes to reference the fact that it is an odd way to reference multi-position players) to play DB once at Cal.